One year ago today I arrived in Paraguay. Most of the time I I can't believe it has been a year already. I have heard from fellow volunteers that the second year goes by even faster. I am now a mentor to a girl who is back into the states getting ready to come to Paraguay. It is crazy that I'm supposed to be giving her advice about serving in the Peace Corps when I feel like I'm still trying to figure things out myself.
After being here almost a year I decided it was time to take a vacation. I, along with five other volunteers, went to a region in northern Paraguay called the Pantanal. I will apologize right now for not having any pictures in this blog. Unfortunately due to a SD card malfunction I don't have any pictures. I am in the process of gathering some from other volunteers which I will post later.
After a long trip we finally arrived in a town called Bahia Negra. Shortly after arriving we met Saul, one of the men who works at the research station Tres Gigantes, which is where we would be staying. Because there were six of us, all of our stuff Saul and all of his stuff we didn't all fit into one boat. My friend Cara and I waited with Saul for the second trip and I'm glad we did because we got the sunset ride with all the birds coming to the water. The trip from Bahia Negra to Tres Gigantes took about an hour.
We brought all of our food with us for the eighth days. There is a women at the research station who will cook for you, but it was really expensive. We didn't bring any meat with us because we didn't have coolers and also none of us are as crazy about meat as Paraguyans are. I am going on a week and a half without red meat, I have had chicken, which is the longest time I have gone without eating red meat in a year. Paraguayans don't consider the food a meal unless it has meat.
Tres Gigantes is located in the Rio Negro National Park which is just under 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres). The research they do involves camera traps and recording the number and species of animals they see and also capturing bats and study them. The US Forest Service donated all of the equipment they use for capturing bats. The research station itself consists of one main building. Up stairs there are three bunk rooms each with a private bathroom. Off the front there is a big screened in porch which was extremely nice because there are a lot of mosquitoes. I had heard horror stories about the mosquitos, but we got lucky and they weren't too bad. Only at sunset were they really bad. Down stairs there is a large dining room and a little kitchen. We shared the kitchen with the staff, but they have their own bunk house. We stayed half the week in the the house and the other half we camped, but we could still use the kitchen and the bathroom in the house so we weren't really roughing it. All the electricity is solar and all the water is pumped directly from the river. They use aluminum sulfate to clean the water but it is a pretty strong chemical so they just drink straight river water sometimes. We had a filtration pump and I brought my UV light water purifier so we used those.
We didn't waste any time getting to explore the reserve. The first night, after dinner, two of the workers took us on a night hike. Unfortunately we didn't see any wildlife, but no worries because we still had a full week ahead of us. We spent the week walking the trails looking for wild life, canoeing, relaxing, swimming in piranha and caiman infested waters. Also we visited Bolivia. The Rio Negro acts as the border between the two countries so we canoed over there and got out. Now I can say I have been to Bolivia!
There are two trails that go along the river in either direction and the day before we left the finished a third trail that went back into the forest. This time of year the water level of the river is going down and because we are going into summer things are drying out which forces the animals closer to the river. There were tons of birds. We also saw quite a few monkeys, caiman, a river otter, foxes and an ocelot, which is a big cat, but not as big as a jaguar. The ocelot sighting was the most exciting for two reasons, one because it is pretty rare and also because of what happened when we saw it. Lydia, another volunteer, and I were walking down the trail early in the morning and I spotted the ocelot. We stopped to watch it and it looked up and I'm pretty sure it saw us. Then it came trotting towards us, looking right at us. We were both frozen in shock. It is about the size of an average dog but could probably do quite a bit of damage. When it was about 100ft away it stopped and ran into the bushes. Unfortunately we didn't see and jaguars or capybaras, but we saw a lot of footprints. The last night we were there we had a bonfire and thanks to another volunteer we even had marshmallows to roast. They weren't like marshmallows in the states, but they worked. The staff enjoyed roasting them as well. We also did some improv skits which were entertaining. The fire didn't last very long because we were all getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.
We were lucky we left the reserve when we did. The first 8 hours of the bus ride from Bahia Negra are on dirt roads. If it rains the bus doesn't run until the roads dry up and there were some dark, ominous clouds building on the horizon. Just a few hours after we made it to paved roads it started raining. Twenty one hours and two buses later I finally made it back to Moriningo. All I wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed after the dusty trip but there was no water. It didn't come back on for two days which isn't a shock to me anymore, just annoying.
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